Paul Camuti, senior vice president of innovation and chief technology officer at Ingersoll-Rand, was among the speakers at the Charlotte Business Journal's Energy Inc. event, held Thursday at the Charlotte Convention Center. Ingersoll-Rand houses two of its business units in its Davidson campus, where the company has about 1,200 employees.

Camuti repeatedly spoke of the importance of innovation during a panel discussion that featured chief technology officers from energy companies across the region.

He even managed to get in a reference to the electric chair. Camuti recounted the story of how Thomas Alva Edison intensely promoted direct-current technology over alternating current, which was touted by Westinghouse Electric Co. Edison even tried to convince the state of New York that DC was the better choice for powering its electric chair.

“Not only was the competition in the electric industry intense from the very beginning, but they were very creative marketers,” Camuti said.

Camuti fielded a few questions about innovation during a break in the event. Below is his answer to one of those questions. Others will appear in the May 17 print edition of the Charlotte Business Journal.

Senior vice president of innovation — what an interesting title. Does that mean that you’re heading up new products across all of Ingersoll-Rand’s many business lines?

We’ve been transforming the company. A key strategy is growth through innovation, emerging markets and services. The role of leading innovation is to really focus on how do we build an innovation engine to deliver growth for the company and see it work across every line of business?

It started off with a clear focus on engineering and technology, but really innovation is a lot more than the technology that we bring to bear.

Ken Elkins covers manufacturing, international business and economic development for the Charlotte Business Journal.

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